“This” is actually about “that”

Rob Bell in Sex God writes about the connection between our spirituality and our sexuality. I am finding this helpful as he expands it. In thinking about desires this morning, I went back to his book. I think he is trying to show that our desires for sexuality are intimately related to our desires for connection–with others and with God.

He writes abut physical things–

“this picture, trophy, artifact, gift–is actually about that relationship, that truth, that reality, that moment of time.”

“This is actually about that.

Whether it’s what we do with our energies or how we feel about our bodies or wanting to have control in relationships or trying to recover from heartbreak or dealing with our ferocious appetites or the difficulty of communicating clearly with those we love or longing for something or someone better, much of life is in some way connected with our sexuality.

And when we begin to sort through all of the issues surrounding our sexuality we quickly end up in the spiritual,

because this

is always about that.

I understand what he is saying–it helps me to make sense of my own struggles and frustrations. It helps me to see why things go so terribly wrong for so many. Bell concludes his preface:

Because this is really about that

It’s always about something else.

Something deeper. Something behind it all. You can’t talk about your sexuality without talking about how we were made. and that will inevitably lead you to who made us. At some point you have to talk about God.

Sex. God. They’re connected. And they can’t be separated. Where the one is, you will always find the other. This is a book about how sexuality is the “this” and spirituality is the “that.” To make sense of the one, we have to explore the other.